by Edith Layton
Cristabel froze. It might be true, but it was more likely just an excuse. It was terrible to think that her hostess disliked her so much now that she couldn’t even bear to sit down to eat with her. If that was so, then she had to leave this place at once. She’d take charity from no man and insult from no woman. But she wouldn’t inflict pain on anyone for no good reason either. She hadn’t followed Sophia to her room last night for fear of involving Martin, but Martin was gone now.
“Thank you, but I think I’ll not eat just now. I feel a twinge myself,” Cristabel said.
Sophia’s maid’s eyes widened when she saw Cristabel standing in the bedroom door. But not as much as Cristabel’s did when she looked into the room beyond her. Sophia wasn’t lying down in bed, a victim to the headache—as Cristabel had half hoped she would be. Instead, she was turning this way and that before her mirror, holding a smaller looking glass in her hand so she could see the pretty white wig she wore from every angle.
“Yes, I think this one—with oceans of powder, of course—don’t you, Annie? Annie? Oh!” Sophia said, catching sight of who was at her door, dropping her hand and gaping at Cristabel.
“I came to say good-bye,” Cristabel said woodenly, although she hadn’t. She’d come to thrash the matter out, to find out what exactly she’d done to offend Sophia.
But seeing Sophia as she was now—in a rosy-colored day gown, wearing a charming little ringleted wig on her head—made Cristabel’s breath catch. Even half-dressed, Sophia looked like the complete lady Cristabel had always dreamed of becoming. She stood in her ornate room with her hovering maidservant, looking like a china doll in an oil painting that belonged in a wide gold frame. Everything in the room was delicate and tasteful, from the fragile gilded chairs to the great tester bed with its satin coverlets. The wig was the final touch. It was all frothy ringlets; and it sat proudly on that little head.
She didn’t have to listen to Sophia. She didn’t belong here, and she knew it. “I came to tell you that I’m leaving,” Cristabel said, not permitting her voice to tremble, “and to thank you for past favors.”
Sophia gaped at her.
“I be gone before you know it,” Cristabel said, for something else to say. And turned to go.
“No!” Sophia shrieked. “No, no, no, no, no. You mustn’t! Oh please. Oh, what are you gawking at, Annie?” she asked, her distress replaced by a sudden air of cold command. “Go downstairs and get us some…tea. Yes, tea. Mistress Cristabel and I shall have tea together. What are you waiting for? Go! Now, Cristabel,” Sophia said when the girl disappeared. She marched over, pulled her guest into the room, and shut the door behind her. “What are you talking about? Leaving? You can’t.”
“I can, and I am,” Cristabel said. “You don’t have to put up with me for one more minute, that, I promise you. I’d have told you last night, but you’d gone to bed, and I didn’t want to disturb Martin. Bad enough to have an unwanted guest,” she muttered, as though to herself, “worse to find she’s snooping about in your bedroom after dark.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have bothered him,” Sophia said, “because he’s never here. He’d be furious if you left, I can tell you. Magnus would kill him.”
Cristabel only heard the first words, and they struck her to the heart. “Oh, I’m—I’m so sorry, Sophia; I didn’t know,” she gasped. “How brave of you not to let on. At home, a wife with such a problem would be screaming the house down.”
Cristabel stopped, and winced when she heard what she’d said, damning her reckless tongue again. Her sympathy for Sophia was so intense that the words had just spilled out. Sophia’s composure only proved again what a lady she was. A pirate woman whose man rejected her would wail and carry on, or carry on in other ways, with other men, to show she didn’t care. But everyone would know the truth, one way or the other. The worst thing that could happen to a woman was for her lover to be untrue. The shame of it was that great. Trust a true lady to know how to deal with shame with such calm fortitude, Cristabel thought sadly, looking at Sophia with awe.
“What? Whatever are you thinking?” Sophia asked curtly.
“You know Martin not ever being here …” Cristabel stammered.
“Of course he isn’t. This isn’t his bedroom. And—and he doesn’t expect to be here,” Sophia said, her voice getting a little lower, her face growing just a tint of pink. “We’ve—we’ve made other arrangements, you see. How awkward,” she murmured. “I didn’t think. We should have, I suppose, but after all, you’re our first houseguest… At any rate, there’s no problem. Certainly no need for sympathy. But you can’t leave, that’s the point. Why would you want to? Is there anything you lack?”
“No, of course not,” Cristabel said. “It’s just that you hate me so much…What kind of arrangement? You’ve only been married a year. Martin did naught but talk about how beautiful you were, aye, every night, all the way across the Caribbean and into the Atlantic.”
“Did he?” Sophia asked, diverted. She patted her wig. “Well, that’s very nice of him. Of course, he tells me, too, but it’s good to hear that he told others. Especially a girl he slept with every night for a month.”
“He did not!” Cristabel shouted. “That, he did not! He slept in the room with me. He didn’t want else, nor did I. I’d have laid him open from his nose to his toes if he did; that, I promise ye! I’m not his woman. Ye be. But now ye be telling me yer not?”
“’Od’s mercy!” Sophia said, pacing in agitation. “Look you, Cristabel. Sometimes husbands and wives come to certain agreements, especially here in London… Martin and I have known each other forever. We always planned to marry. Neither of us ever wanted anyone else. But when I turned twenty, and he two and twenty, our families got involved. The long and the short of it is that my father said that if I didn’t marry by the time I was one and twenty, he’d marry me off, and devil take the hindmost if I didn’t like the fellow he picked. The truth is…” She hesitated before she blurted, “He had a bosom friend who had a son, and there was just a chance he’d seize the opportunity to please his friend rather than me. So Martin and I agreed to marry sooner than either of us planned.
“Well,” she said, “we both were mighty happy being single. Since I had to marry, and since I really don’t want babies”—she said the word as if it were “rabies,” Cristabel thought—“at least not just yet—I’m so young, and having such fun—we decided to, ah, forgo that part of our marriage, for now. There being no other sure way to prevent them, after all.”
“But babies are the best part of marriage!” Cristabel gasped. “They’re worth all the rest. They’re the only reason I would ever wed. Oh!” she said, her hand flying to her lips and her eyes growing round. “Does that mean you’ve…never? You and Martin? Oh. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Of course we have,” Sophia snapped. “One has to on one’s wedding night, after all. But after that—I’m not shirking my duty. Just delaying it.”
“Well, I think that’s terrible,” Cristabel said staunchly. “Poor Martin. Men have certain needs, you know. Unless—please don’t say it’s all right with you if he has other women?” She was appalled. Pirate women might be free with their favors. But the one thing they wouldn’t tolerate was another woman touching their man. It was the cause of the greatest battles between men and women at home. Of course, it was also the constant cause of them, pirate men being no more faithful than were their women.
“Certainly not!” Sophia said.
“Then it’s not fair,” Cristabel concluded. “If you’re not going to take care of a man’s needs, you’ve got no right tying him up in marriage. It’s part of the bargain.”
Cristabel stared at Sophia thoughtfully. Even though her hostess was a fine lady, and a married one, they were both about the same age, and neither had any older female relatives nearby. At least, she’d never seen Sophia with any family aside from Martin and Magnus, although it might just be that she didn’t want anyone from her family seei
ng her odd guest. Still, for whatever reason, Sophia didn’t seem to have an older woman as confidante or counselor. Nor was she married the way Cristabel thought of being married. In fact, in many ways she was as alone as Cristabel herself. And maybe more vulnerable. It occurred to Cristabel that there might be some things ladies didn’t know, because they were ladies. Although she’d learned so much from her governesses, there were some things they would never discuss. She’d had to learn about what went on between men and women from pirate women. And she’d learned a lot.
“Look you, Sophia,” she said hesitantly, “I’ve heard a lot of females talking in my time, and they’re freer with their tongues than ladies. From what they say—it’s clear that which goes on ’twixt a male and female is a peculiar thing. You can’t always judge it right from the first time, they say. That time is like a try cake—just made to make sure the skillet’s hot, and better off thrown away and forgot soon after. It doesn’t mean the rest of the batch of hotcakes will be bad. Just the reverse, in fact.”
“There was nothing wrong with that time,” Sophia said at once, looking harried and defensive. But Cristabel was too involved with framing her thoughts to notice.
“Then that’s very good, to be sure,” Cristabel said carefully, “since it’s a thing—well, as I hear tell, it’s a thing females either like or they hate. But more than that, for some it takes some getting used to—like sailing,” she said with happy inspiration. “Why, the first time my father took me out, I thought I’d leave my gizzards at sea forever, and now I can sail in a waterspout and not turn a hair…” She saw Sophia’s expression and paused.
“But this I do tell you,” she went on with utter sincerity. “For them that like it, it’s supposed to be such a wondrous good-feeling thing that they can’t ever do without it again. Aye, ’tis that good, ’tis what they say. And so it must be. Else why would sane women put up with philanderers and drunks and bad men like they do? Not just for the babies—it can’t be that. No, it must be a wondrous thing indeed. It just takes some getting used to. For women. Men, they say, enjoy it mightily from the first. Think, Sophia. If that’s so, why then, ’tis a cruel thing to deprive the man you love, isn’t it? Especially if he’s an honorable man, who won’t seek it elsewhere.”
There was a silence when she was done. Sophia stared at her. Then she shook her head. “A fine thing that I should be lectured about the intimate side of my marriage by a pirate’s brat! And in my own home at that!”
“I’ll be going,” Cristabel said.
“No,” Sophia yelped. She gave Cristabel an odd look, and then laughed. “I listened to you, didn’t I? And I told you things too. I suppose I wanted you to know, and wanted to know what you thought too. I have my own doubts, sometimes…
“But as for you,” she said, eyeing Cristabel closely, “I’ll be as honest with you as you were with me. I didn’t like you being here, that’s true. And I certainly didn’t like what you just said. But it might be true. And it might be that I needed to hear it even if it isn’t. It’s certainly true that if you leave, Magnus will be furious. I won’t be the reason for a break between him and Martin. Martin adores him, and to cause a rift between them would be very wrong of me.
“English gentlemen are not pirates, Cristabel. An English gentleman will give up his own pleasure for his lady’s pleasure. Martin says he doesn’t mind, he only wants to see me happy. I know other women who have the same arrangement we do. In fact, many won’t let their husbands into their beds ever again after they’ve given them a handful of children. In fact, it’s becoming quite fashionable…
“However that may be,” she went on, “let’s stop fighting, shall we? I need you here. And truly, you’re not as bad as I thought you’d be. So please say you’ll stay, will you?”
Cristabel nodded. It was a poor apology, but perhaps it was the best Sophia could do. She decided to accept because she didn’t really know where else to go. It was a thing she’d have to start thinking about, she decided as she walked back to her own room. She didn’t belong here. This incident with Sophia just proved it once again. She felt even more odd and out of place than she had before.
She’d tried to offer sympathy and understanding and had gotten her nose snapped off. And she didn’t even know why. Her education hadn’t prepared her for this. She didn’t understand gentlemen or ladies and didn’t know if she ever would, or should. It might be a fashionable thing for Englishmen not to bed their wives, and even though she’d once thought that such an arrangement could only happen in heaven, now she wasn’t so sure.
It should have been a fine solution for her. She should have rejoiced to hear that such arrangements were possible. But now she didn’t know if she could ever live that way.
Such a husband would have to be a shadow of a man, one she didn’t care for at all. When she thought of a man she’d care for—a tall, strong man with controlled emotions showing nowhere but in those knowing gray eyes—she couldn’t imagine living like a nun with him. If he were in the house with her day and night, as her legal husband, with every right and cause to be intimate with her, she’d be tempted to touch those wide shoulders. She’d wonder what it would be like to put her hands on that broad chest and feel that great heart beating beneath them. Simply thinking of those big, long-fingered hands of his made her realize where she’d like them to be…
If such a man didn’t come to her bed, she’d think that she was repellent.
And if he did come to her, she’d become his slave. A mewling, complaining, eternally unhappy woman, like all the ones she’d known, giving her heart to a man, allowing him to take pleasure and then discard it. She could not bear it. She would not.
Anyway, she thought as she drew a shaky breath, it would never come to pass. She knew better. And as for him? Well, she was foolish to think he felt anything more than responsibility for her. The thoughts went round and round in her head as she went to her room to pace until dinner, when she would see him again, and perhaps know some answers. Or greater confusion.
*
Magnus didn’t come to dinner, though he had been expected. They sat and listened for the door to open all through the meal, but they went from soup to fish to fowl to beef to puddings and cakes, and still he didn’t come.
After dinner, they adjourned to the parlor again. Sophia sat at a small table and played a solitary game of cards without looking to see if she’d won or lost. Occasionally she’d look up and study Martin, frown, and then fiddle with her cards again. Martin sipped port and made desultory conversation, and Cristabel didn’t know what she said in answer. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she had discovered. These new revelations frightened her, and it wasn’t in her nature to be afraid of anything. The only thing that made her feel better was the realization that Magnus was too much a gentleman to take advantage of her. He probably didn’t want to, anyway. Which somehow made it worse.
When they heard the door knocker and voices in the outer hall, they all stopped breathing and stared at the door. And when Cristabel saw him standing there, tall and strong and with a slight smile on his bold mouth, she knew, in that one instant, to her shame and her fear and her utter delight, that her life had been nothing until she’d met him, whatever came of it. She rose, with a glad smile on her lips.
His eyes went straight to her. Seeing her expression, he smiled back at her. She opened her lips to speak. And only then saw who stood at his side, dark as the shadows around them, but clear as the nose on her face.
“Damn you for a bleeding Judas!” Cristabel shrieked, louder than all the fishwives in Kingston town on a sunny Friday morning. “Double damn yer black-rotted guts, y’filthy, slimy double dog bastard of a whoreson!”
“Be that me, m’lord,” Black Jack Kelly asked on a wide smile, “or you?”
CHAPTER 9
“Now, don’t draw steel, luv,” Black Jack cautioned, backing away from Cristabel’s fury. “His lordship brought me meek and mild, and that’s how I want it to stay. I c
ome after you, and I want you to hear me out. Devil me if you don’t look fine, though! You were an eyeful as a pirate lass, but drop me if you don’t take me breath away as a lady.”
Cristabel ignored him. She was used to pirates and their flattery. They would tell any woman that she was pretty just to pacify her, and nine times out of ten, it worked. But not on Cristabel.
“You brought him!” Cristabel said to Magnus, in a voice filled with astonishment and pain.
“Would you rather I refused him and forced him to climb in one of Martin’s windows one night—or worse? The only way to keep him out was to kill him, and I hesitated to go that far,” Magnus answered.
“Hesitated?” Black Jack said, scowling. “Now, it never came to that, m’lord, but if you think you can, then—”
“Stow it,” Cristabel told him in disgust before she spoke to Magnus again. “I take yer meaning, m’lord, and thinking on, I don’t disagree,” she sighed. “It were just such a surprise. I mean, it was such a surprise—ah, you were right, my lady,” she told Sophia. “Just see what having a pirate’s whelp as a houseguest nets you—more pirates. Like having mice,” she grumbled, and turned away so no one could see the real hurt and distress on her face.
Black Jack was a handsome fellow, but every inch a wild buccaneer. From his black looks to his wild clothes, he personified everything she was trying to forget. She couldn’t bear to see Sophia’s reaction, much less Magnus’s. Had she dared to look, she’d have been surprised. As Cristabel despaired, Sophia was staring at Black Jack with fascination, Martin was smiling—and Magnus looked very worried. By the time she turned around again, Magnus had recovered his cool expression.
“Master Kelly has things to say to you, Cristabel,” Magnus said, “and I deemed it better they be said in company, as they would be with any other lady. Unless I misread the situation and you’d rather be alone with him?”